When he reached my leg he bumped my shin with its head. His tusks were capped with cork.
“Hello, Peanuts,” I said. I crouched down-an act that brought tears to my eyes-and gave the elephant a scratch on the head.
“Not Peanuts,” McGlade said, walking in behind me. He scooped up the elephant and held him at eye level. “Penis. Check out the size of his junk.”
The elephant did, indeed, have impressive junk.
“It’s like a second trunk,” McGlade marveled. “You want to touch it?”
He shoved the elephant in my face, its lengthy dong flopping around and threatening to take out one of my eyes.
“No thanks.”
“He’s a bonsai elephant.” McGlade set the pachyderm down. “That’s as big as he gets.”
“He’s…” I searched for a word that wasn’t derogatory.
“Very elephantish.”
“Yeah. I gotta get him a mate. Problem is, they’re so freakin’ expensive. I tried a few nonelephant surrogates. A cat and a poodle. He killed them both.”
“His tusks?”
“Naw. Slipping them the high, hard one.”
“Nice.” Wasn’t sure what else to say to that.
“They both sounded like they died happy. The poodle especially. Vet said it was a heart attack.”
“And the cat?” I asked, wondering why I cared.
“Internal bleeding. Here, take these.”
McGlade handed me six pills.
“What are they?”
“Morphine, hash, and valium.”
“There’s enough here to kill me, McGlade.”
“The other three are speed, so you don’t lapse into a coma. Take them and go shower. There’s a robe hanging in the bathroom.”
I noticed his apparel, which had more stains than there was space available. “Is the robe clean?”
“No. But after the pills, you won’t care.”
I took four of the pills, then hit the bathroom. The warm shower was both invigorating and painful, and then the drugs began to kick in and I was able to scrub my wounds with soap without crying for my mother.
I stepped out of the shower, pleasantly buzzed and feeling no pain, then toweled off and slipped into a robe that wasn’t too badly stained, though the fabric was a bit stiff in parts.
“I’m in the office!” McGlade called.
I walked to him with a spring in my step, thanks to the amphetamines. But it was a wobbly spring, thanks to the hash and valium. I’d skipped the morphine. That shit put me to sleep.
The satisfied smile on my face dropped off when I saw what McGlade had spread out on his table.
Surgical tools. A lot of them. Silver and sharp and shiny in the overhead lights.
“What’s all that for, McGlade?”
“This is why you came to me, isn’t it, Talon? They switched off your headphone, and you want it working again. Right?”
“Yeah.” But now I wasn’t so sure.
“How do you think that’ll happen? Hope and a head massage?”
As I stood there the room began to wobble, so I grabbed the doorway for support. “Have you done this before?”
“Four times. Two of them successful. I’m charging you five thousand credits for this, by the way. That includes patching up your arm and hand.”
“I also have some broken ribs.”
“We’ll call it an even fifty-five hundred. Though tipping isn’t discouraged.”
The doorway began to wobble as well. “I dunno about this, McGlade.”
“Don’t worry. Penis is here to help.”
Penis was standing on the table, holding a scalpel in his trunk. I giggled, because the thought of a miniature elephant sticking a knife in my ear was pretty funny.
That alone was proof I shouldn’t have been here.
“Sit before you fall over. Put your head on this semiclean towel here.”
He patted a rolled-up towel. Penis dropped the scalpel and walked up to it.
“Your pet is getting amorous with the towel.”
“Just the inside. You’ll have your head on the outside.” That made a warped sort of sense. I weaved over to the chair and managed to sit down without falling over. The elephant was really going at it, his tiny elephant hips a blur. After a few more thrusts he trumpeted and walked away.
“I want a new towel,” I said.
“You’re such a little girl.” McGlade tossed the towel over his shoulder and placed a pillow on the table. “Head down, princess.”
I complied, resting my ear on the towel. Just a few inches away, Penis stared at me. It was a prurient stare. His trunk extended and he sniffed my nostrils. I had a bad feeling he was judging their depth and flexibility.
“Get him off the table,” I said. “I don’t trust him.”
“He’s fine. He won’t hurt you.”
“He looks like he’s sizing me up.”
“Don’t worry. He’s got a long refractory period.”
“Off the table, McGlade.”
“Fine. Sheesh. You’re some kind of animal hater, you know that, Princess Talon?”
“I want my nose to remain a virgin.”
McGlade grabbed the elephant and set him on the floor. Then he picked up a bottle of iodine.
“First I’m going to sterilize the area. Then it might get a little, um, uncomfortable.”
The iodine felt warm, almost soothing.
The scalpel wasn’t soothing at all.
“Hold still. I don’t want to rupture your eardrum.”
He brought down a magnifying lens on an articulated arm, then went at it. I tried to stay still, wishing I’d taken the morphine. It felt like… Well, it felt like someone was jabbing a scalpel in my ear.
“All headphones have a very tiny external jack, for updating the firmware,” McGlade said. “A guy I know, he made a nanochip that can reflash the bios. It cycles WLAN channels and piggybacks on nearby users, which means free calls via Wi-Fi. Of course, it also works for people who get their headphones disconnected. Not really good with long distance, but it’ll do for a hundred miles or so.”
I wasn’t paying attention to him, my jaw locked on the corner of the pillow in an effort not to flinch and Van Gogh myself.
“Okay, I’ve exposed the jack. This is the tricky part. Don’t move.”
He ripped open a small plastic package, taking out what looked like a dental pick.
“Chip is in the tip. I place it into the jack, and we’re good to go.”
“What’s that slurping sound?” I said around the pillow.
“Suction hose, sucking up all the blood. Stay still.”
He jammed the pick in my ear, but it was sort of anticlimactic, and I only wished for death twice instead of the five times I’d wished for it when he was using the scalpel.
“There. Now I’m going to use some living stitches. This might sting.”
I’d been stung by bees before. Living stitches felt like I was having my skin pulled off with hot pliers. I may have cried a little. Or a lot.
“Okay, we’re good. Let’s work on that hand.”
“I think I want the morphine,” I said, shaking my leg. The elephant had wrapped himself around my ankle.
“Don’t be a baby, Talon. Living stitches aren’t that bad.”
